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But is that team really any better than the pre-rebuild Sox? Maybe? It’s arguable. The only reason Machado/Harper even make sense for us is because of their nigh unprecedented youth and upside, such that they can be expected to remain at peak performance for years to come. Otherwise, we shouldn’t dip into the free agent market at all other than to buy guys that fell through the market. This team still needs a TON of talent to emerge to even be considered a real competitor. To do that, we have to give ABs to kids to let them learn, and spend as gratuitiouy as possible on adding more long term talent to the development pipeline. To push in on good-not-great 31-year old pitchers with short shelf lives is akin to the Melky Cabrera/Jeff Keppinger Mired in Mediocrity(tm) strategy that got us all here in the first place. It hurts to watch this. But we are two years in now and two years closer to the promised land. Stay the course!

How are people angry about this? Eloy Jimenez is a millionaire, based entirely on the fact that people think he will one day be good at his job. If he does his job well he’ll become a hundred times richer. His employer, a company that spends between $70-150M on employee salaries each year, is choosing deploy Eloy in such a way as that they maximize his productivity under their employment, in accordance with the labor rules collectively bargained by the employer and the players’ union. If you are angry at teams trying to keep production cost low, you should also be angry at players when they hold out for the most money. Both parties are acting selfishly! I wanted to see Magglio Ordonez play for the White Sox longer, how dare he abandon me to make more money in Detroit? But really you should be angry at neither of them because you’d do exactly the same thing if you were in either set of shoes.

Absolutely right. It’s not necessarily a free agency thing, it’s just a pitcher thing. Szymborski always says “pitchers don’t decline, they break.”

Significant injury history, velocity was down this year, had best year of his career by ramping up slider usage. Thin market should inflate his value. Good pitcher, but not a profile that you want to buy at market rate a year or two ahead of when you really need him.

I don’t see this as anything more than making Cruz aware that the Sox would give him a soft place to land if his market falls apart I guess we, as fans, are conditioned to think of team salary as a transient, temporal resource that comes and goes from year to year — but to an owner, I gotta believe $30M is $30M. I’m not saying there’s no situation where we could end up with him, but if you think that it won’t affect the White Sox ability or willingness to spend big later, I think you’re crazy.

Point taken. Still would like to see them do it with starters. I’m sure it’s a combination of identifying the right talent AND developing it, but some teams have done it consistently enough that I believe it’s more than luck, even if it’s very difficult.

Yeah, so we know it’s in JR’s soul somewhere, to be willing to spend to satisfy his desire for a guy/to win beyond what makes business sense. But you’re right, the money has changed drastically since then, way ahead of inflation. It makes you wonder if the revenue increase and the player salaries increase have kept a similar pace or if one is ahead of the other.

Well, ok, I guess I should qualify more. These are all guys who have gained velocity moving into a relief role, right? I’m talking about adding velo to a starter via Driveline-style strength trading and kinetic chain work, like the aforementioned Beuhler or nearly every Yankees prospect.

At this point, literally no one should be questioning whether or not the White Sox will be “going for” Machado/Harper, especially the former. The question is are they ACTUALLY ready to outbid every MLB team. They’re consistently willing to offer what consensus seems a reasonable, median contract for even big money players - the types of offers that we fans say we are “comfortable with.” Thus far, they have not been willing to say “this is too much for this guy, but I need this guy and so I’m spending it.”

Well, sure -- but I doubt they thinking is "I'm going screw up and blow all of my money" is the plan on the day they sign.

Wow. What a different time. That entire article essentially just acknowledges ownership collusion around the league lol

I think it’s the latter. Poor guy

Aww

This is true. Go check out Twitter right now. There are hundreds of meat heads retweeting Morosi with “LET’S GOOO!!!!$&)” If you have no intention of getting one of these guys, you should be pounding these interviews with messages supporting patience, reminding them that we are a couple years through this thing and to go in prematurely will just make it longer.

FWIW, because a lot of posters are bringing it up — I do not think that this tweet implied at all that the White Sox are considering signing both of them at the same time. They are Pursuing both to sign one

Ron, make a ban bet with Jon Morosi that the Sox won’t get both Harper and Machado

But I don’t think we should be afraid of the deal being inefficient with this type of a player. Because being inefficient is the only way you win the bidding. You don’t get the young superstar on free agency if you aren’t willing to be the highest and thus most inefficient bidder. Food metaphor! The Sox have done so well at stripping all the fat from the payroll, getting lean and healthy. This is cheat day. You get to eat cake today because you’ve remained healthy and can handle it without becoming obese. If you want to stay lean, that’s fine, but you don’t get to eat cake then. You’ll never eat cake. Ever again. What kind of life is that?

A front loaded deal would absolutely mean more money for the player. That’s why you so rarely see them. The team knows this, and the players, I think, are typically more driven by the optics of their salary than actually maximizing it. To them, being rich isn’t much different than being a little more rich. It’s what makes the pop culture meme of the Bonilla deal so hilarious. It’s seen as a quintessential “LOLMets” move that gets brought up every year to denigrate the franchise, when in reality it’s one of the smartest things they ever did, economically. Basically, someone outbid them for a player they wanted. Instead of spending more than they could afford, they deferred the hell out of their return offer. If they hadn’t done that, they just would have had to pay him way more initially than they really did (or miss out on him). The Scherzer deal is going to turn into the same thing. Fans are going to make fun of the nationals for paying him ten million bucks a year not to play for him, when in reality the Lerners got the man they wanted while paying probably $30M less than the sticker price appeared simply by gaming inflation.

The whole point of us wanting the team to spend wisely is so that they can break the bank later when it really makes sense. If a 26-year old 5-win position player doesn’t constitute that, I don’t know what will.

Same!

Which is six times more than one. Also Gavin Sheets being bad doesn’t make Justin Yurchak better.

I think it's going to be more like $70-80M total.

You forgot the .326 SLG/1 homerun part, lol. Oh and he's a first baseman.

Nah, he's 27. He'll be the first one to go through the post-Ohtani posting system.

I'm not saying I agree with it, just that it acknowledges reality and is consistent. He explains that he disagrees with consensus. That's a lot of context for a greg post.